Amartya Sen: Evening

“Even when altruism is allowed (as, for example, in Gary Becker's model of rational allocation), it is assumed that the altruistic actions are undertaken because they promote each person's own interests; there are personal gains to the altruist's own welfare, thanks to sympathy for others. No role is given to any sense of commitment about behaving well or to pursuing some selfless objective. All this leaves out, on the one hand, the evil passions that early theorists of capitalism contrasted with self-interest and, on the other, the social commitments that Kant analyzed in The Critique of Practical Reason and that Adam Smith discussed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

Amartya Sen

1990s, Foreword to The Passions and the Interests (1996)

Sense , Passion , Evil , Personality

“Central to the Smithian approach is our willingness to see critically what we observe around us. The sense of comfort that is often associated with being content with the world as it is can seriously hamper the pursuit of justice. This understanding goes strongly against a line of thought that was powerfully presented by Friedrich Nietzshe. ‘The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad’, said Nietzshe. I think I can, with some effort, understand what Nietzsche meant, but it is hard for me, even with a lot of effort, to see that Nietzshe’s hypothesis helps us to understand the causation or resilience of the nastiness of the world in which we live. Nor, I must insist (this I do as a thoroughly unreligious person), does it offer any obvious insight into the lives and achievements of Martin Luther King, or Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, who have tried to reduce injustice in the world and have done so with non-negligible success.”

Amartya Sen

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

World , Justice , Understanding , Thinking

“That austerity is a counterproductive economic policy in a situation of economic recession can be seen, rightly, as a “Keynesian critique.” Keynes did argue—and persuasively—that to cut public expenditure when an economy has unused productive capacity as well as unemployment owing to a deficiency of effective demand would tend to have the effect of slowing down the economy further and increasing—rather than decreasing—unemployment. Keynes certainly deserves much credit for making that rather basic point clear even to policymakers, irrespective of their politics, and he also provided what I would call a sketch of a theory of explaining how all this can be nicely captured within a general understanding of economic interdependences between different activities… I am certainly supportive of this Keynesian argument, and also of Paul Krugman’s efforts in cogently developing and propagating this important perspective, and in questioning the policy of massive austerity in Europe.
But I would also argue that the unsuitability of the policy of austerity is only partly due to Keynesian reasons. Where we have to go well beyond Keynes is in asking what public expenditure is for—other than for just strengthening effective demand, no matter what its content. As it happens, European resistance to savage cuts in public services and to indiscriminate austerity is not based only, or primarily, on Keynesian reasoning. The resistance is based also on a constructive point about the importance of public services—a perspective that is of great economic as well as political interest in Europe.”

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen, "What Happened to Europe?", New Republic (August 2, 2012)
2010s

Understanding , Question , Support , Effort

“Smith distinguishes with great sophistication the different kinds of reasons people have in taking an interest in the lives of others, separating out sympathy, generosity, public spirit and other motivations. Even though he acknowledged the role of mental attitudes and predispositions, he went on to discuss how reasoning, which is at the heart of rationality, must have a big role in preventing us from being – consciously or unconsciously – too self-centred, or thoughtlessly uncaring.”

Amartya Sen

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

People , Motivation , Heart

“It is arguable that a closer contact between ethics and economics can be beneficial not only to economics but even to ethics. Many ethical problems have what we have been calling 'engineering' aspects, and some of them do, in fact, involve economic relations.”

Amartya Sen

Chap. 3 : Freedom and Consequences
1990s, On Ethics and Economics (1991)

Problem

“The continuous cries for help - from children and women and men - ring in my ears, even today seventy-seven years later.”

Amartya Sen

pg. 115
Source: 2020s, Ch. 7 section 2

Children , Help , Men , Women